We’ve been advising business owners, for quite a while, to make sure their website is mobile-friendly, in order to make the user-experience optimal. This is more important than ever, and Google has just made an implementation to their mobile search results that makes having a mobile-friendly website even more critical.

Effective immediately, Google has added “Mobile-friendly” labels next to websites in search results that are optimized for mobile devices. Here is an example below of how they appear:

Mobile-Friendly Google Label Example

Website Rankings Implications

So with the new knowledge that Google will now officially be promoting mobile-friendly websites with a label in search results, the next question becomes – Will this impact search result rankings? We’ve been advising clients that we believe it will and the answer was given to us yesterday directly from Google:

“We see these labels as a first step in helping mobile users to have a better mobile web experience. We are also experimenting with using the mobile-friendly criteria as a ranking signal.”

So there’s your answer. If your website is not mobile-friendly, it won’t be promoted in Google search results with a label, and it very likely won’t rank as highly. The full, official press release from Google can be found here.

The Next Step

As far as mobile-friendly websites go, responsive websites are Google’s top recommendation. We’ve been building these type of websites for our clients for quite some time. Contact us today and we’ll make sure your website is on the cutting-edge.

You can test your website out with this free tool from Google to see if it’s mobile-friendly.

 

Posted in Small Business, Website Tips